Selection of a Call Center

Selection of a Call Center

BY PRAFUL SHAH

The role of a contact center is more than customer services; the contact
center has evolved and is responsible for revenue as well. Currently, more than
50% of contact centers have turned into profit centers. As the role of the
contact center evolves, the transactions performed by a contact centers are
evolving as well, ranging from taking orders, responding to marketing campaigns
and more education interactions with customers. The contact center now plays a
central role throughout the customer cycle from identification, acquisition to
service.

We are in the midst of an astounding transformation in the way organizations
serve their customers. Most contact center organizations today, are transforming
into customer-facing organizations, and these centers do not have to be location
specific. Customers want interaction with companies in order to provide them
with higher levels of differentiated service. All interaction is through multi
channel contact such as live agent, e-mail, IVR, voice mail, Web chat, instant
messaging or fax.

Customers have two choices for selecting a call center. The first choice is
for the premises based call center. The second choice is for the Virtual IP
hosted call center. Designing a contact center is a challenging and
time-consuming task, with broader operating and financial implications. During
last few years, the mobility of workforce is also playing a bigger role in the
decision-making process.

Once business and customer needs are determined, you need to understand and
select the right set of products and features in order to integrate the required
functionality. The call center is required to provide system features by using
state-of-the-art IP and Telecom technology (ACD, Predictive Dialer, IVR,
Reporting, Monitoring, Conferencing, Email, Web chat). High reliability is
expected through layers of backup servers, backup electrical generators, and
backup voice and data networks. It is not unusual to have 10 different products
that need to be integrated together. This technical complexity of the contact
center requires experts from every technical domain to work together in order to
architect the solution.

In a premised based contact center, once contact center technology is
implemented and next is to integrate all of the required applications, and to
train users (call center managers, administrators and agents) on all of the
products (i.e. PBX, IVR, CRM, ACD, etc.) integrated into a call center. This is
an arduous task for anyone. The process is often longer and more complex than
creating, compiling and executing the training sessions. It does not necessarily
end there, whenever there is an upgrade to one of the components in the contact
center, training, manuals have to be implemented to all the representatives.

One of the biggest hidden costs of deploying a premise based contact center
is the cost of maintenance. It now becomes essential to employ a telecom expert,
a Networking expert and an IT expert in order to stay abreast of training,
updates and additions associated with the different applications in the contact
center. In a premise based contact center, the technical people constantly have
to carry out projects to improve the contact centers functionality and
reliability. Whenever an application goes awry, technical team must determine if
the issue is an artifact of the integration of the various applications or an
issue with that particular application. This requires a huge investment that is
both costly and inefficient.

The virtual IP hosted contact center model, which EagleACD provides, is a
valuable tool for giving small and medium businesses the functional equivalent
of a premise-based call center. This includes a full operational and
administrative control, access to all real-time and historical reports, without
lead-time implementation. Contact Centers offer full control of call treatment
with monitoring and recording of all media for the most effective call center
management and quality assurance. This approach takes away all the pain, cost,
time and resources of the vendor. It eliminates planning or budgeting for an
integration project. Additionally, there is no need to track, maintain and
implement product updates from various vendors. IP Hosted contact center
provides a complete solution and ensures quick implementation. In other words,
the operators do not need to invest or maintain the communication
infrastructure. This product adoption strategy allows you to be up-and-running
much faster and much cheaper.

With EagleACD, everything is integrated not only from agents perspective but
also from administrative points of view. Adding an agent is very simple,
selecting his/her skills, access rights and the agent is automatically
provisioned to use the call center. Also, reporting and management tools are
synchronized. Similarly, queues and recordings are easily available. This
flexibility represents tremendous savings in time, money and energy.

IP based call center is the future trend, as a number of call center
operators are either evaluating or implementing this option. There are six main
reasons to consider IP based center such as EagleACD:

1. No upfront capital investment

2. Speed of deployment (can be set-up in matter of days)

3. Super Scalability and easy distribution

4. Predictable and low per minute fees

5. No training, maintenance or upgrade costs

6. Fully integrated solution (easy to use, allowing multiple customers to run
on a shared environment)